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Without tax breaks, solar future looks cloudy

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That coalition has run about half a dozen inside-the-Beltway advertising campaigns and has targeted key Senate states.

Over the Fourth of July recess, for example, the coalition had ads up in six states that focused on renewable energy and the rising gasoline prices. In the three weeks leading up to the recess, the coalition called constituents of a dozen Republican senators to urge them to support the issue, said Sierra Club’s lead lobbyist Melinda Pierce, who has been helping to spearhead the lobbying drive.

Also in on the action is the technology community. TechNet, a trade group representing about 150 high-tech companies, has been lobbying the issue because most of its members see green technology as the next wave of innovation, said Betsy Mullins, TechNet’s vice president of government and political affairs.

More than 30 of the group’s senior executives flew to Washington to push the tax extensions as part of their lobby day this year. More than 20 lawmakers and administration officials have visited green tech companies and investors. And the group’s representatives have also talked to reporters, testified at congressional hearings and signed on to at least two dozen letters.

For more than six months, the group’s chief executives have also been calling administration officials and congressional leaders in both parties.

“Energy is not something that’s limited to any one part of the American economy. It’s ubiquitous, like technology,” Mullins said. “If you find a way to provide cheap energy, there’s tremendous economic potential out there.”

Still, some in the business community don’t like the way Baucus has proposed to pay for the credits.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for instance, doesn’t believe Congress should fund the renewal by eliminating or delaying tax breaks to other industries.

The Financial Services Roundtable, representing 100 chief executives from leading financial services companies, opposes the provision that would delay a tax benefit for multinational corporations because it would hurt companies’ global competitiveness.

The other funding provision would strip hedge fund managers of a tax benefit that allows them to keep their income in offshore accounts to avoid immediately paying taxes on it.

The Managed Funds Association, which represents hedge fund professionals, sent a letter to Capitol Hill arguing that such a move would hurt the country’s economy and markets.

Still, some say the business community is not especially eager to kill the proposed funding schemes.

For one, many expected Congress to delay the tax break for multinational corporations anyway, “so we’re not freaking out,” as one financial services lobbyist put it. And many in the business community view the clean energy tax credits as beneficial and worth the sacrifice of the other tax breaks.

Much of the holdup, insiders say, comes down to election-year politics. And there’s also a feeling that Democrats and Republicans are using the battle as a scrimmage to prepare for the 2010 expiration of President Bush’s tax cuts.

Whether supporters will get lucky this year remains to be seen. Back in Vegas last week, a billboard outside of Ausra’s factory read, “Nevada’s solar future starts now.”

But unless Congress acts to extend the clean energy tax credits, supporters say, it’s unclear how long that sunny tomorrow will last.